Shut Your Crow’s Beak – Essential Chinese Vocabulary

Here’s an interesting phrase that I came across the other day while talking with a friend. I had mentioned that the transfer time for their flight might not be enough, and if there were to be a delay they would surely miss their connecting flight. Their reply to my doubts was 閉上你的烏鴉嘴 （闭上你的乌鸦嘴 bìshàng nǐ de wūyāzuǐ）, literally “shut your crow’s beak”, to which came my obvious reply – what the hell is a “crow’s beak” in this context?

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If you have any more examples of how you’ve heard this phrase being used then let us know in the comments below.

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Dave Flynn

Dave is a designer of websites, learner of Chinese and lover of technology. Originally from the UK, he's been living in Taiwan and learning Mandarin Chinese for the last eight years. He founded and runs Chinese Hacks, a blog dedicated to effectively learning Chinese.

In addition, 烏鴉嘴 can be used as an adjective. When someone says something we don’t want to happen in the future, we can say “你很烏鴉嘴耶！”, or “不要烏鴉嘴啦！”, meaning that you act like a bad luck bringer, or don’t be a bringer of bad luck!

Wow, that’s really interesting! Have you found out any more about the origin of this phrase? I think it’d be interesting to try and trace out the etymology!

Also, we all know how regional certain slang can be, especially in a country as big as China. I am a newcomer to the site, and notice that you use traditional characters instead of the simplified – are you yourself based in Hong Kong or Taiwan? Is that where all of these phrases are becoming popular?